Tag Archives: local farming

I have been focussing on farmers for the last couple of months. Farmers are the lynchpin of our local food system. Their numbers are dwindling. Fifty percent of farmers in British Columbia are over the age of 59 years. Their average age is 55. They are under threat from shrinking revenues and almost non-existant profit margins. Local farming is simply not sustainable under the current framework.

Our food issues are massive. The players are myriad, from the farmers themselves to the geopolitical juggernaut that mandates that agribusiness and international trade trump small-scale, mixed-crop farming. This is, as I’ve said previously, a “wicked problem”. No one player or solution will be able to address food security or institutional food insecurity. That’s a term I heard tonight at Good Food For All, an open discussion hosted by Vancouver Food Policy Council at Vancouver’s Roundhouse.

There is no magic bullet for food security.

There is no magic bullet for food security. On a global level, it requires agricultural science, food science, social science, political science, and many others I haven’t yet considered. In order to feed our world, we need everyone to come to the table. To feed Vancouver, we need all of that, but with a special focus on maximizing the potential of one of the most fertile growing regions in North America, so that it serves the people who live in and around it. In a world hugely dependant on agribusiness to produce the food we eat (everything from GMO wheat to the organic mega-acres like Earthbound Farm in California) a global food crisis, where monocultures grown in great swaths of land could have the potential to be wiped out in weeks, we need to strengthen our local capacity to produce food. It won’t sustain us forever, but it will help mitigate the wallop such a collapse could wield.

If we consider the focus on ensuring that farms keep growing produce in the Metro Vancouver region, we know we have to focus on small farms that grow mixed crops. In defining “small”, I’ll stick with 2 acres to 300 acres. There are smaller, urban farms. There are larger rural farms, but to narrow my focus, this is where I have landed.

Local food production, and making sure it continues to thrive, is a battle of “relentless incrementalism”…

Local food production, and making sure it continues to thrive, is a battle of “relentless incrementalism” as adeptly coined by speaker Nick Saul from Community Food Centres tonight at Good Food for All. There will be no “great battle”, no pivotal moment. It will be committed people, pushing steadily and constantly, to ensure that farmers can live decently from their labour and feel like valued and significant members of our society.

With this in mind, I have decided on the perhaps lofty goal of making farming a more reasonable living for farmers. At this point in time, my concept is a hub. This is not a new idea, but it is a good one. If farmers own their hub; if they find profitability in it; and if that hub gives Metro Vancouver greater access to locally grown produce, my goal can be achieved.